


It Wasn't Too Long After All

by LuciferClau



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, Past Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Solitary Confinement, finding ways to connect when you can't see each other, kiddos protecting each other, love in times of war, social distancing, the quote in the summary inspired me to write this, these two kids are caught in a war they don't deserve to be in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25777384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciferClau/pseuds/LuciferClau
Summary: “Human connectedness cannot be easily broken by mere distance and forced solitude.”— Maria VaughtShadow Weaver confines Catra to an isolation dormitory. Adora finds a way to talk to her.
Relationships: Adora & Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87





	It Wasn't Too Long After All

Catra sees red under her eyelids. She’s trying to rest, but the lights are too bright for her to fall asleep. She resorts to staring at the pure white bulbs, resorts to allowing her eyes to burn. They’d burn in the morning, anyway—no point stalling, right?

Catra’s been in this room before, so confinement was not a new pain for her. Yeah, her rations were meager compared to what she normally got; yeah, maybe they  _ were  _ starving her; she still got food, so again, not a new pain.

It was the social isolation that fucked her up. Adora’s touch was the only thing she knew about love. She needed it: it reminded her that when deciding between slashing Lonnie in the face or curling into Adora’s chest, there was a right and a wrong choice. Adora’s touch helped Catra choose right, helped Catra remember she  _ wanted  _ to choose right.

What Catra  _ needed _ was Adora’s back pressed against hers, so maybe the icy bite from the metal she slept on could  _ lay off _ a little bit.

She couldn’t have that right now, though. Her tail quivered around her lean, tiny body, wound itself around her hips as she thought about it.

Catra sensed the night dwindling into morning: shuffles from older guards, distant giggles and clangs of sillier, clumsier cadets of her age, they all replaced the thick, morbid ringing that distinguished the night. Her ears flicked upward at the sound of paper crinkling beneath her door. Her neck jerked, her body hopped on all-fours, her eyes dilated, her tail frizzed like a firecracker. She pounced for the wrinkled paper that smiled at her from the floor, just in time to hear nimble footsteps hopping away, in the direction of the young laughter.

Catra saw the paper was tarnished with ashy blotches and debris, like someone dug through the garbage to salvage it for a new purpose. It was folded in half, with gray, grainy markings littering the front in lopsided lettering. It read, “Hey Catra,” with a large, gray squiggle wandering around the page to form a big heart. She opened the card.

“I’m sorry Shadow Weaver’s being a meanie. You don’t deserve to be in there.”

The letters were in a misshapen conga line that bounced around the page from left to right. Catra rubbed the letters with her thumb. The warmth from her cheeks spread to her softly-caressing hand. She closed her eyes, imagined Adora’s hand still wrote the words. She could imagine Adora tucking herself inside her bedsheets while she wrote the contraband. She could imagine the pale, shaking hand rushing to get every word she wanted Catra to hear on the dirty paper. Catra imagined her small hand taking Adora’s wrist from its frantic work, imagined her thumb caressing the inside of her wrist, where Adora’s veins threatened to pop from beneath the skin. The last thing she heard before she opened her eyes again was Adora’s heavy hiccups. She could feel the wetness on her fur from Adora’s tears.

“Thank you for standing up for me, Catra. I could’ve gotten myself really hurt if you hadn’t stopped me.” Catra let out a chuckle that scratched her throat; she hoped the guards would bring her some water soon.

Adora sprinted across the gridded tile of the simulation room, baton in her fists. Her heavy, forceful feet slammed into the floor, helped her gain more speed as she dodged and slipped away from the training bots. Immediately after the bots zapped Kyle and Rogelio—thus terminating them from the sim—Adora moved her legs quicker, pushed them harder against the ground.

Adora’s speed and fervor prevented her from seeing what Catra’s agility and precise vision allowed her to see: a deep pit in the ground, inches from Adora’s pounding feet. The feline was already using all four of her feet to provide her stable footing, and she didn’t hear any bots directly above them just yet. They were near, Catra could carry Adora across the trench, help her regain her footing, her feet slightly lingered on the ground before she-

“ADORA!” she was airborne, and her voice cracked as she screamed her name, and their bodies crashed together, and both girls slammed into each other in a heap on the other side of the trench. Catra pushed her body up from Adora’s chest. Her striped arms shook from the sprinting. The girls shared a smile and a determined nod before they rose as one into a fighting-stance barricade. Catra unhinged her claws from her fingers so they grew long as daggers, and the bots were almost to them, and then a dull moan from all the bots sounded across the training field.

Adora and Catra relaxed, glanced at each other with wide eyes, before Shadow Weaver floated over to them. The feline’s fur rose off her body, and she widened her frown in defense against the impulse.

“Every single time you make a move to protect her,” the lanky woman of shadows paced in front of the two, striding back and forth, “I give you a reminder that you are hurting her.”

“She only does it to protect me, I appreciate what she-”

“What she’s doing,” the witch towered over Catra with a sharp tone, “Adora,” and proceeded to curl her black talons gingerly across the blonde’s skull, “is stifling your progress with hasty rescue endeavors,” her voice rose, echoed across the training room with every word, “that do not  _ challenge  _ you.” the warning ended with an emphatic hiss.

The fangs inside Catra’s mouth rattled under the pressure building up in her jaw. Her bare foot slammed against the floor, and her fists unclenched so her claws could bare themselves, just as long as her superior’s sharp fingers.

“What’s the point of coming in as a team if you don’t want me to help her?” the brunette’s wild locks flashed upward in her outburst. She sauntered to stand before Shadow Weaver with fire tingling in her fingertips. A clawed finger pointed up at her mother figure. She went on about the pit being part of the training simulation, about the pit holding more threats for the cadets to mitigate, but Catra’s tongue moved with heated conviction.

“Try and stop me from watching out for her. Your little tricks can’t fool me anymore.”

“Is that so? I suppose you wouldn’t mind an  _ extended _ stay in your vacation room, then.”

Which brought her here.

The warmth she received from standing up to that witch was worth any cold metal on her rump. That was the first time Catra gave Shadow Weaver a taste of her own medicine, and boy, was she high on the revenge. Other times her superior sentenced her to solitary, she hadn’t spoken up, only asked mindless questions and curled into herself as the shadow monster dealt the blows, both verbal and physical. The feline’s fangs sparkled in the blinding light as she revelled in her successful rebellion.

Which brought Adora’s letter to her hands.

“You were so brave for screaming at her like that. I want you to remember that. I don’t know how long you’re gonna be in there. So I want you to remember that you did a good thing. I just… wish you let me fall.”

Catra thought of some words to write back to her.

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself because of me. Please, Catra. I need you to be okay.”

The words flowed through the brunette’s head fast, like the air that slapped against her face during a training sim.

“I’m gonna keep writing you, and you’re gonna keep responding to me, okay? I’m gonna sneak back here tonight before curfew hits to grab what you write back. If I used some of my ration bar to write you, you’re gonna find a way to write me back.”

As if she needed to write that. Catra’s tail curled, and her lips pulled up in a cocky smirk.

“Do that for me.”

Catra would do anything for her.

The square compartment at the middle of the door shifted into a platform, and Catra’s single ration bar for the day slinked in. She shoved the letter into her gray shorts, feigned a scratch, and took the tray.

While Catra nibbled at her favorite food, she wrote Adora back, taking her time pressing pinpricks of indents into the paper with her claws. She made sure not to rip the paper, yet also made sure that the letters were neat and parallel—that way, the typewriter-esque format could compensate for the fact she didn’t actually write with any ink.

It took the entire day to get the words down. When the bustle quieted in the barracks, Catra hastened her claw movements down the paper. Catra held the paper before her, read it to herself:

“You remind me of all the good things. That’s why I keep protecting you. You and me, we’re good. Shadow Weaver’s stupid, she doesn’t see it. I know it worries you when I let her hurt me. But I gotta keep the good in you safe. I’m not gonna let her take that away from you. I need you to be safe.”

Soon enough, footsteps slinked up to the door, and Adora’s shrill, shaky breaths hitched the moment her palms pressed against the metal.

“Catra…?” the blonde’s voice squeaked: another sob. Catra slid the paper beneath the door, held her soft palm to the metal, too.

That was how their correspondence started. With Adora by her side, Catra’s solitary didn’t feel long at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine’s still going on, believe it or not. Things keep opening up, and people keep going out, but I’m not buying the fact that things are safe.
> 
> I’ve been trying my best to be careful: seeing friends online, spending in-person time with my family, going to outdoor events, telling my friends I can’t go out anywhere far because I need to keep my family safe.
> 
> Seeing so many people going out without a care in the world, not wearing masks and hugging… It feels weird. It’s hard to admit it, but I feel jealous. I want to hug my friends just as much as they do, but I can’t, because until there’s a vaccine or a medicine, it’s just not safe. For anyone.
> 
> So yeah, when I decided to write this, I was crying over how much I missed life before the coronavirus. Writing this made me remember what I’m really looking for when I’m going out with my friends: love. When I go out, what I care about most is learning new things, and experiencing them with the people I love.
> 
> Writing this helped me remember I can feel their presence even when they’re not right in front of me. I choose to remember that until quarantine ends, whether that’s in a year or a few months.


End file.
